As the week winds down, my fridge is usually filled with odds and ends, bits and pieces and the makings for all sorts of tasty tidbits.  I am also ready for a break and really don’t want to decide ‘what to make for dinner’.  This little exercise will test your kids’ creativity and maturity, and they better pass the test or they’ll go hungry!  If you take inventory and can honestly say that any intelligent human being can create something relatively nutritious from the ingredients your cupboards and refrigerator/freezer contain…then proclaim it an “Every Man For Himself Dinner Night”.

A FEW TIPS FOR SUCCESS: 

• Scribble a list of what you see that can be created from what you have on hand.
• Give a specific older child responsibility to prepare something for a specific younger sibling (never assume :).)
• Give everyone a time limit and nutritional boundaries, ie., fruit roll-ups are off-limits and popcorn or French bread with butter does not qualify as a meal (at least make a fruit smoothie and a peanut butter sandwich on wheat bread to go with the popcorn), and, the meal will be eaten and cleaned up by 7 p.m. or you don’t eat.  (otherwise they’ll put if off because they’ll get lazy and be hungry at 9:30!)
• Each child is responsible to clean up the details of their own preparation and meal mess.
• Assign each older, capable child a final task such as sweeping kitchen, cleaning surfaces, scrubbing sink….so you can walk into a ‘clean as a whistle’ kitchen later.
• DO prepare something for hubby because he’s your man and you love him and want to serve him and he worked hard all day, too!  Unless of course he offers to take you out, then - whoo-hoo - it’s party time!  Or perhaps a really good-cook-of-a-child would serve Pops well, then by all means, ‘assign’ Daddy’s meal to that kid!
• DISAPPEAR…to your room, to the patio, or to the yard to read, to write a letter or to make a phone call to a friend for a nice catch-up-chat.
• THEN….when ‘time’s up’:
• Interview the brood and find out what they prepared for themselves and their younger siblings.  Admonish the brutes who starved the little ones and bless those who who took the charge seriously and did their best, even if it wasn’t your best.
• Check the chores to make sure they were done.

BUT DENISE….

Perhaps you’d say, “Doesn’t sound like much of a ‘Vacation’ to me.”  But I’d say, “if you train ‘em right once, you’ll have bought yourself many more pleasant ‘Every Man For Himself Dinner Nights’  to come in the future!”

*This is a Mini-Vacation with lots of bang for your buck:  A fair amount of emotional investment ONE TIME ONLY; after that, they’ll be a breeze!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 2:38 am and is filed under Mom's Home: domesticity, No Ordinary Child, No Ornery Child! solutions to parenting predicaments, Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.